Every one in the house was pleased when Anna Akimovna
was in good spirits and played pranks; this always
reminded them that the old men were dead and that
the old women had no authority in the house, and any
one could do as he liked without any fear of being
sharply called to account for it. Only the two
old women glanced askance at Anna Akimovna with amazement:
she was humming, and it was a sin to sing at table.

“Our mistress, our beauty, our picture,”
Agafyushka began chanting with sugary sweetness.
“Our precious jewel! The people, the people
that have come to-day to look at our queen. Lord
have mercy upon us! Generals, and officers and
gentlemen. . . . I kept looking out of window
and counting and counting till I gave it up.”

“I’d as soon they did not come at all,”
said Auntie; she looked sadly at her niece and added:
“They only waste the time for my poor orphan
girl.”

Anna Akimovna felt hungry, as she had eaten nothing
since the morning. They poured her out some very
bitter liqueur; she drank it off, and tasted the salt
meat with mustard, and thought it extraordinarily
nice. Then the downstairs Masha brought in the
turkey, the pickled apples and the gooseberries.
And that pleased her, too. There was only one
thing that was disagreeable: there was a draught
of hot air from the tiled stove; it was stiflingly
close and every one’s cheeks were burning.
After supper the cloth was taken off and plates of
peppermint biscuits, walnuts, and raisins were brought
in.

Agafyushka sighed and sat down to the table; Masha
set a wineglass of liqueur before her, too, and Anna
Akimovna began to feel as though Agafyushka’s
white neck were giving out heat like the stove.
They were all talking of how difficult it was nowadays
to get married, and saying that in old days, if men
did not court beauty, they paid attention to money,
but now there was no making out what they wanted;
and while hunchbacks and cripples used to be left old
maids, nowadays men would not have even the beautiful
and wealthy. Auntie began to set this down to
immorality, and said that people had no fear of God,
but she suddenly remembered that Ivan Ivanitch, her
brother, and Varvarushka—­both people of
holy life—­had feared God, but all the same
had had children on the sly, and had sent them to
the Foundling Asylum. She pulled herself up and
changed the conversation, telling them about a suitor
she had once had, a factory hand, and how she had
loved him, but her brothers had forced her to marry
a widower, an ikon-painter, who, thank God, had died
two years after. The downstairs Masha sat down
to the table, too, and told them with a mysterious
air that for the last week some unknown man with a
black moustache, in a great-coat with an astrachan
collar, had made his appearance every morning in the
yard, had stared at the windows of the big house,
and had gone on further—­ to the buildings;
the man was all right, nice-looking.